Windows 8 SDK and Orca

The Windows 8 SDK has a new version of Orca for those of us who edit msi files. The download is for a small executable, sdksetup.exe which causes the following dialog box to appear. If you only want Orca and you don’t want to install the SDK, override the default and download all of the files to the location of your choice. In this example, the files are downloaded to D:\Media\Windows8\SDK

The extraction process creates an Orca subfolder containing the Orca.exe file. You can run Orca from that folder. It does need the other files in the directory to work. You can copy the entire folder to another location, even another computer and run Orca without installing it.

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About John Paul Cook

John Paul Cook is a Data Platform Solution Architect working out of Microsoft's Houston office. Prior to joining Microsoft, he was a SQL Server MVP. He is experienced in SQL Server and Oracle database application design, development, and implementation. He has spoken at many conferences including Microsoft TechEd and the SQL PASS Summit. He has worked in oil and gas, financial, manufacturing, and healthcare industries. John is also a Registered Nurse who graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Master of Science in Nursing Informatics and is an active member of the Sigma Theta Tau nursing honor society. He volunteers as a nurse at clinics that treat low income patients. Contributing author to SQL Server MVP Deep Dives and SQL Server MVP Deep Dives Volume 2. Opinions expressed in John's blog are strictly his own and do not represent Microsoft in any way. Follow @JohnPaulCook